Heller STARTER KIT Queen Mary 2

In May 1998, the directors of Carnival Cruises, the world's leading cruise company, asked naval architect Stephen Payne to think about the design of a huge transatlantic liner with completely new facilities to replace the famous Queen Elizabeth 2 within the fleet of their subsidiary Cunard. Very quickly, Stephen Payne, who had a passion for the great liners of the 1930s, defined the general line of this extraordinary ship, quite simply the largest liner in the world at 345 metres long, 41 metres wide and 72 metres high (the equivalent of 23 storeys). The architect takes the best aspects of the past and translates them into the present: the breakwater on the foredeck is a legacy of the very elegant Normandy breakwater. The façade is very much inspired by the staircase of the original Queen Mary. But the "steps" have given way to a gentle slope. The Queen Mary was fitted with open bridge wings: they are now reinstated, but closed to better withstand the bad weather in the North Atlantic. QM2 has inherited her helm and the line of her funnel from Queen Elizabeth 2. However, the new Cunarder is indeed a 21st century ship, combining the advantages of a cruise ship with those of a liner.